How to Make Your Remote Team Members Work as One

There is something about managing a remote team of freelancers that makes you feel so accomplished. Think of the successful projects you’ve completed because of them despite the distance and the confusing time differences.

How do you manage to make this remote team setup work for everyone?

Advantages of Hiring a Virtual Team

If you've been hiring freelancers online for most of your projects, you probably know by now the pros and cons of managing a remote team. It's fun having to meet (in this case, virtually) people from different parts of the globe, and eventually build a work relationship with all of them.

It's cost-effective in more ways you could think of. The rates of overseas freelancers are at times lower than what you pay for local employees. You don't have to rent or build an office to accommodate your growing team. Your business is operating even when you're asleep, because you have people on the other side of the sunny world working.

You've also put into consideration the amount of work and the time it requires to complete it. You probably don’t need a full-time employee for that design project your business needs at the moment. Hiring freelancers has always been the easier route to choose.

Disadvantages of Hiring Remote Freelancers

Now, what are the common struggles you've faced in managing your remote team?

This was mentioned in the intro: time zone differences. Counting hours backward or in advance -- this could be on top of your daily challenges. Imagine something comes up and you need help from that freelancer who’s probably in dreamland at the moment you have to get a task done.

Your freelancers are completely different kinds of people. Maybe they are hundreds of miles apart from each other. If you try to figure out the only reason why they’re connected, it’s all just because of you. They talk different languages. They have different work styles. They have different personal goals to fulfill. But because of your project, they have to think and work as one.

An Efficient and Unified Team

How will you make them work as a team? How will you make them function as one given all the things that set them apart?

Managing a remote team could be daunting if you don’t have a well-structured system. When you delegate tasks, you should consider the time zone differences and see what works well for everyone to achieve the fastest turnaround as much as possible.

The same thing goes for setting deadlines. Are you assigning the high priority tasks to the ones closest or within your time zone? It’s also better to have a backup person for each major task assigned so if the main person won’t be around for an urgent need, someone will be ready to cover it.

It could be challenging, but if you’re working with the best freelancers, no matter where they are in the world, you can work as a unified team.

Got a huge project coming up? Build your next set of fantastic freelancers to do the following for you: